In which a group of graying eternal amateurs discuss their passions, interests and obsessions, among them: movies, art, politics, evolutionary biology, taxes, writing, computers, these kids these days, and lousy educations.

The LA Times profiles an illegal family with ten kids -- every one of them, by dint of our crazy "anchor baby" policy, now a fully-fledged, and fully-entitled U.S. citizen. None of the kids speak English well, and the family is making resourceful use of our social services. Nice passage:

All the youngsters have had their healthcare bills covered by Medi-Cal, the state and federal healthcare program for the poor. Alfredo Jr. had been hospitalized all his life until recently. He's had three state-funded brain operations and will require several more, the family said. The couple receive $700 in monthly Social Security payments to help with his medical needs.

"I thank this country that they gave me Medi-Cal," Magdaleno said. "There's nothing like that in Mexico."

North Carolina jails are being "stressed to the limits" by DUI illegal immigrants. It seems that driving while smashed is a commonplace practice in Mexico. Are we wise to be importing the habit?

I've argued before that, in allowing mass immigration from Latin America, the U.S. is doing a huge injustice to our black population. Now a new black organization has been formed to protest current immigration policies. Nice line from their homepage:

Mass illegal immigration has been the single greatest impediment to black advancement in this country over the past 25 years. Blacks, in particular, have lost economic opportunities, seen their kids' schools flooded with non-English speaking students, and felt the socio-economic damage of illegal immigration more acutely than any other group.

I live in Arizona and I've seen this trash problem first hand. It's ruined about half of Organ Pipe Nat. Monument on the border, what used to be one of the most pristine stretches of Sonoran Desert. It was littered with discarded plastic bags and bottles the last time I was there. I won't be back.

In Phoenix - not the prettiest city to begin with - the same thing has happened to the parks, which are heavily used by Hispanics. I'm more ambivalent about immigration than you are, but the trash really bothers me. They really have no problem with littering. I've seen Mexicans fast food bags out the window of moving cars. Disgusting.

I see that Pat Buchanan's new book, State Of Emergency, is gaining traction despite the usual smear campaign. The masses (you and me) are finally waking to what's at stake.
Prediction: both Parties, realizing they have to "do something," will draft a new, toothless, "reform" immigration act, which they will then try to sell to The People as "The Solution." The People will buy it, and our evolution into the amorphous monstrosity of Amexica will continue.

Posted by: ricpic on August 27, 2006 1:50 PM

My family is educated (BS degrees) and we're struggling middle class in a very expensive east coast metropolitan area. This weekend, I was at a party hosted by extremely wealthy (law firm partner types) in-laws of a friend of mine. What I was struck by is the palpable barrier between people like me and very wealthy whites.

Our hosts and their peers had their small children over, and carried on like any other people do. But the sense of security they had, the sense of being so completely insulated from blacks, from the criminal element of Hispanics, was amazing.

That's the difference between the American middle class and the elites, in a microcosm. On one hand, there is the lumpen-middle, who feel the precariousness of things they should be taking for granted: nice neighbors, normal white kids in their children's schools, etc.

On the other hand, there are the elites, who will never, ever feel insecure. And this would be fine by me, except for the fact that the elites, with their feckles liberalism and Marie Antoinettish pro-immigration sentiments, is ripping away from the rest of us that whch they keep for themselves.

Posted by: SJ on August 27, 2006 6:54 PM

Glen, please spare us the all or nothing logical fallacy. We all know how to cut it off to a trickle.

You should see the parks where I live here in Chicago, where there is trash all over especially after a weekend where the illegal alien/foreign national mexicans are out. Also, there are illegal alien mexicans living in some of the parks and forest preserves around here. Good stuff.

I would agree with ricpic but I think the Minuteman movement and the Hazelton PA legislation says otherwise. The problem is getting worse by the day. I don't think people are going to be happy with a symbolic gesture. But he is right that the politicians will try it.

Posted by: s on August 28, 2006 10:09 AM

In Laguna Beach, California (conservative, Republican, Bush voters), city officials and everyday folk decided to get tough with illegal immigration … by signing an agreement with state officials to maintain a day labor center on state land.

The hiring center was the city's solution to homeowners' complaints about immigrants who congregated in well-heeled residential neighborhoods to solicit work. The canyon site is near building supply businesses that draw the contractors likely to need temporary workers, and it's not next to any residential areas.

The good people of Laguna Beach, like others elsewhere, want the best of both worlds. They want to be able to benefit from illegal alien labor, but they don’t want their lawns to get messy with surplus workers hanging around when they are not needed. And being hypocritical fiscal conservatives, they don’t much mind if the state and the feds pick up the tab for the other costs of illegal immigration. Since they themselves don’t have to pay the full costs, they make out like the bandits some want to accuse illegal aliens of being.

From an LA Times news story:

‘Kenneth Frank, the city manager, said he wasn't saying the center "is right for immigration law or wrong for immigration law. It's just a pragmatic solution. We do not have the practical ability to enforce federal immigration law."

The city gives about $25,000 annually to a nonprofit organization that runs the center.

Dicterow, the mayor, said that because the city can't stop illegal immigration, "if we are going to have a problem, the question is how to best deal with it."

At the center, manager Irma Ronses said the workers were pleased with the agreement to save the operation.’

Lori Haley, a spokeswoman for ICE, and Rep. John Campbell (R-Irvine), mouthed some nonsense designed to placate their constituents while maintaining the status quo.

A cartoon counterpoint from libertarian cartoonist Peter Bagge: “Beware the Brown Peril! The truth behind the job-stealing, disease-carrying terrorist invasion from the south.”

Interesting quote: “Boundaries should solely be about where your tax dollars go to be squandered. Other than that, the only good thing about borders is that they make colorful maps. So let’s get rid of ‘em!”

Just a little reminder: Reason Magazine and it's staffers are not Democratic Party members, not liberals, and until the Bush Administration took office, could not really claim to be part of an elite, at least not an elite that had any particular power.

A poster on another board made an excellent point about the Mexicanization of Los Angeles. The drastic degradation of this city in recent years is a symptom not only of the arrival of the corrosive values of Mestizo Mexicans who have come by the millions, but also of the pernicious absence of Anglo Americans who have LEFT in equal numbers: Our good, quiet neighbors with well-kept yards who now volunteer for Neighborhood Watch up in Seattle or Portland ... their law-respecting children who aren’t spraying graffiti or joining gangs there ... the studious local high-school grads who didn’t come back here after college in the MidWest ... the working class who wouldn’t work for wages depressed to sub-minimum by illegal Mexicans ... the moderates in the middle-class tax base ... the voters who approved prop 187 by a landslide, etc. All displaced—rather than engulfed—by the incoming Third World. The terminal condition of many parts of L.A. today is due as much to the departure of these vital, quality-of-life-sustaining European American values as it is the toxic presence of the chaotic Mestizo Mexican culture. Pathology can be caused by deficiency as well as infection.

Posted by: perroazul del norte on August 28, 2006 6:07 PM

"On one hand, there is the lumpen-middle, who feel the precariousness of things they should be taking for granted: nice neighbors, normal white kids in their children's schools, etc."

I never brought it up the trash subject because I thought anecdotal evidence may not be fair to the illegals. But reading these comments it seems others are noticing this disturbing trend.
I had a hispanic friend who told me when I was going to a local lake that it was Lake Dirty Diaper now, since the illegals go and just leave their kids' diapers floating in the water. Nice.
One of my friends works as a janitor in a school which serves an illegal neighborhood; he reports that the Mexicans seem to throw much of their trash in the alley, despite the fact that there are cans in the alley, and they are living with this stuff themselves.
A month ago, I walked out of my neighborhood market and a family, speaking Spanish, was getting in the car. They all (four of them) threw their trash from their candy right on the ground. I wanted to toss them in a pit of hell, as I would with any litter bug. Instead, so as not to question a man in front of his family, I pointed out to the 12 year old girl who was last to drop her trash that there was a can 2.5 feet from where they were dropping their trash.
I know I'm not suppose to notice this stuff, but it just adds to my fury over this whole mess.
steve a

Posted by: steve a on August 28, 2006 8:51 PM

"The LA Times profiles an illegal family with ten kids -- every one of them, by dint of our crazy "anchor baby" policy, now a fully-fledged, and fully-entitled U.S. citizen."

And I hasten to point out again that when you hear about the cost of illegal immigration as Congress debates and considers legislation, remember that not a dime of the costs of those 10 children's health care, schooling, and other welfare benefits will be counted as costs of illegal immigration - they are all US citizens. If the average citizen of the US knew the degree to which he is being gulled, there would be riots in the street.

Posted by: D Flinchum on August 28, 2006 10:26 PM

Patriarch,
I hope you're not speechless because a racial element has finally been introduced by the "other side," i.e., the white side (which is more open than any of the other players to welcoming nondestructive differences -- but fed up with having to put up with corrosive differences).
By the way, if you find such identifying offensive, then you should be against the Mexican invasion. The Mexicans certainly have a complete identification and exclusivity when it comes to who is a Mexican. Ask any Guatemalan who has been shaken down and/or raped while passing through Mexico.
I don't want to play racial games. And I don't want racial tests for entry to the U.S. But if the powers that be (education, govt. corporations and even the arts) are going to beat me over the head with multiculturalism. Tear down my society, change the language. (Has the mainstream media in this country seriously discussed one of the biggest changes ever made to the U.S., the introduction of a second language? Such a change should have been a 10 part series in all of the major newspapers.) Then, the time has come for the rest of us to play our racial cards. Either that or we lose the game.
P.S., I watched, from the auto repair shop, as a junior high (mostly hispanic, and a bit black and white) in my town was at the end of the school day. The teachers had to escort kids out to the perimeter of the school. Cop cruisers and a police helicopter circled the area. They had the usual crummy mural up with the usual minority heroes and even a sign saying, "South Africa is free." Rich. So if anyone is shocked by these comments, you can prove me wrong by enrolling your precious one in this institution.
And I would ask you, Am I suppose to ignore what is before my eyes, and let the multiculturalism's phony words of equality soothe and/or cow me as it blossoms into the tyranny that is assuredly its future.
steve a

Posted by: steve a on August 29, 2006 1:37 AM

The New York Times had a recent article on the decline in real wages even as productivity and corporate profits have risen during the same time period. It’s hard to see how one can blame a rise in corporate profits on illegal alien immigration. It’s even harder to see how anyone can talk about illegal aliens magically causing a decline in wages while ignoring employment practices and official Bush Administration policy.

Bush as rarely made a speech about economics in which he talks about the wages of citizens and legal residents. Instead, he consistently blathers about an ownership society in which presumably everyone is either a small business owner or a corporation, or maybe a farmer, and no one is an employee, except of course for all those immigrant “guest workers” doing those magical jobs that Americans won’t do.

Here’s one of the key points from the news report:

‘As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”’

Illegal immigrant employment which drives wages down is just part of a larger trend in employment trends. In a story which has expired from the New York Times free site, but which may still be available somewhere on the web, reporters noted how smaller towns were becoming pockets of poverty (“Rural Oregon Town Feels Pinch of Poverty, August 20):

‘…A high school degree was not necessary to earn a living through logging or mill work, with wages roughly equal to $20 or $30 an hour in today’s terms.

But by 1990 the last mill had closed, a result of shifting markets and a dwindling supply of logs because of depletion and tighter environmental rules. Oakridge was wrenched through the rural version of deindustrialization, sending its population of 4,000 reeling in ways that are still playing out.

… The town is an acute example of a national trend, the widening gap in pay between workers in urban areas and those in rural locales, where much of any job growth has been in low-end retailing and services.’

So far, neither Republicans nor Democrats have any clue as to how to stimulate the economy. But clearly, although illegal immigration is a serious issue, simplistic scapegoating is pointless. You need something stronger than liberals whining about Wal-Mart and some conservatives wailing about illegal immigrants.

Posted by: Alec on August 29, 2006 4:15 AM

Alec: 1) Total compensation (which includes benefits such as health insurance) has stayed in roughly the same range over the last 40 years. Simply put, health care costs are eating up a larger and larger part of worker's paychecks.

2) The trends in wages are difficult to link to political processes, let alone Bush administration policies. Even a dyed-in-the-wool liberal like Brad DeLong has questioned the link between income stagnation and political measures.

3) The wage impact of illegal immigration has been put at around 5-10% (applies to workers without a high school degree over the last 25 years) by economists who are pessimistic about the economic effects of illegal immigration. That is, that is the UPPER bound of those estimates.